


The Homecoming

by suitesamba



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After spending ten years looking for his place in the magical world, Harry finally finds his home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abrae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrae/gifts).



> I didn’t participate in the IJ/LJ/DW Secret Snarry Swap this year (2012) but found some time to put together a “Coming Home for Christmas” story. I wrote this one with my friend abrae in mind, as a thank you for all the cheerleading, pre-reading and beta-ing she’s done for me this year. Happy holidays to all, and peaceful, joy-filled homecomings.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** Not mine. Never were. Never will be. No profit is being made from this amateur work.

Harry came home for Christmas.

He’d tried to find his place in the Magical world in the years following the war. He’d joined the Aurors, but working from a cubicle in the Ministry had nearly driven him spare. He couldn’t tolerate being confined to a small space, a tight cubicle in a crowded office in the bowels of the building. Confinement was the _Petrificus Totalis_ atop the Astronomy Tower, like being tied to a tombstone, like a musty tent wrapped up in wards. Confinement was a cupboard under the stairs at Number Four Privet Drive with its cloying smell of lemon floor polish.

He hated lemons. Hated lemonade. Hated sherbet lemons. Hated Hogwarts would not _think_ of Hogwarts would not think of _Remus Tonks Colin Fred Dumbledore._ Would not think of the Shrieking Shack _Nagini, Voldemort, Snape, blood, memories, Look at me!_

With no commitments and a desire to fly—no, _flee_ —Harry had weighed his options and set off for Romania. He lived there on the dragon preserve with Charlie, learning the hearts of dragons, the hearts of men. By day, Charlie taught him to recognize dragon breeds by their profile in the sky and the way they dove and soared. He learned to respect them, to care for them. And by night, he learned the raspy stubble of beard on beard, the feel of a shiny burn scar beneath his fingertips, the curve of arse and thigh and hip and shoulder. He loved the dragons and was grateful to Charlie, but the world was large and the dragon preserve too small. He was too young for Charlie, too green, too close to Ron and Ginny, too much a Weasley already. Romania, in the end, was not his home. 

He’d returned to England, to Grimmauld Place. He visited Ginny and the Harpies and was talked into a skirmish, and he must have blinked because a day later he was being recruited to play Quidditch for the Wasps and then by the Tornadoes, so how did he end up with the Canons? He was a good Seeker—a _great_ Seeker—but the press hounded him, and it was like being in the Ministry cubicle, the cupboard under the stairs, trapped and entombed. He could not fly high enough, stay up long enough, to escape their clutches. And two years into this new Magical career, the fleeting freedom of the sky could not compensate for the claws of Rita Skeeter and the cage of falsehoods she built around him. 

He left with grace. He left with his apologies. He thanked his coaches, his managers, his fellow players. Then he slipped away, back through the fabric of his fame, and disappeared.

He went to University. He took drawing lessons and studied yoga. He taught himself to play the guitar. He learned to drive a car and drink coffee and use the Underground and explore the Internet. He finished school and earned a degree and hung the certificate on his wall and stared at it from time to time. On a complete lark, he took a job at the London Zoo.

He had ice cream in Muggle London with Teddy on Saturdays and dinner at the Burrow with the Weasleys on Sundays. He brought Teddy to Grimmauld Place and read stories and cut the crusts off sandwiches and fought imaginary dragons with him and played Hide and Go Seek in the attics. When he was twenty-five, he slipped silently into St. Mungo’s and held his tiny goddaughter for the first time. He whispered to her that she was the luckiest girl in the world to have parents who would love her as much as Ron and Hermione would. He touched her hand, her perfectly sculpted yet impossibly small fingers, and wondered what would be expected of her. Great things. But safe things. _Reasonable_ things. A cherished child, planned and wanted, with a nursery and a mobile of glittering snitches and magic— _magic_ —in her home.

He took a job with a London veterinarian, a man named Richard with warm brown eyes and sturdy hands. He fell quietly into Muggle life, into this Muggle’s bed, and with Richard, he was just Harry Potter. It was just a name, a name that held no promises, no wide-eyed wonder, no magic. An ordinary name hiding an extraordinary man.

He let his hair grow until he could gather it in a tail. He pierced his ear. He grew a beard. He got drunk with Ron at a London pub the night Hugo was born and came home with a tattoo of a chimera on his hip. Ron was a father of two. The owner of a successful Diagon Alley business with his brother George. Respectable. And Harry was living with a Muggle man twice his age—a kind man, a settled man—helping in a veterinary clinic, soothing beasts. It was a calm life, a peaceful existence. He was turning safely in place and not going anywhere.

His life with Richard faded away. It was a quiet parting. A silent hug and one last look at the vibrant green sea in Harry’s eyes. 

_Look at me._

At twenty-eight, alone again, he went back to Romania.

Harry found Charlie standing in front of an iron rail on a rocky outcropping with another man, pointing at a dragon perched on a high ledge in the distance. The wind was whipping back their hair and their robes. Harry could see Charlie in profile; he didn’t recognize his companion. But he turned as Harry called out a greeting to Charlie, and Harry’s stomach bottomed out.

Severus Snape.

_Hogwarts._

There could be no separating Severus Snape from Hogwarts, no way for Harry’s brain to reconcile _this_ man here with the man he had not seen—deliberately not seen—for ten years.

They stared at each other—Harry at Snape, Snape at Harry, Charlie at one then the other, a wry smile on his lips.

“Here he is, the one I was telling you about,” Charlie said then, his voice caught and carried by the wind. Harry heard him say it, didn’t understand, looked at Charlie imploringly.

“Potter? You were talking about Potter?” Snape gave Harry an assessing look, then turned back to Charlie. Harry’s mouth opened to ask what the hell they were talking about even as his brain registered that the voice was different. Low. Slightly sibilant. Brilliantly damaged. Alluring. Seductive.

_No!_

“He knows his dragons,” Charlie was saying. “And he has a way with wild things, Severus. He’s worked at the London Zoo and spent the last two years as a veterinary assistant in a clinic outside of London. He has a Uni degree to boot. He’s perfect for the job.” He sized Harry up with his eyes. There was something wistful in them and Harry knew, _he knew,_ that now, finally, he could be the man Charlie would not have let go all those years ago.

“Job? What job? I don’t want a job.” He heard himself protest.

“Nonsense.” That voice again. Familiar and foreign wrapped in silk, laid on velvet. “You will want _this_ job. Hogwarts is in need of a Care of Magical Creatures Professor, and Mr. Weasley has refused my offer. It pays well and should not overly tax you.” 

He stood before Harry, arms folded against his chest, wind at his back. His hair whipped forward now, partially obscuring his face. An appraising look, humored, interested. A forced sigh, long suffering. “It is time you came back to Hogwarts. The Headmaster continues to plague me about you.”

The Headmaster? _Snape_ was the Headmaster. Back in his post by the time Hogwarts cobbled together enough classroom space for a late start the winter of 1998. 

“Albus is insufferable,” Snape was continuing, voice just on this side of haughty. “You’d think you were a favorite crup that had gone astray.”

He looked at Harry significantly. “I do not like the beard. You are far too young to carry it off well.”

Harry smoothed the beard with fingers and thumb, tugging a bit on the end. He had meant to shave it before he came here but had left it on as a lark. “The beard must go, but you may keep your hair long.”

Harry opened his mouth. Closed it. Stared at Severus Snape.

Shook his head.

Who was this man? He didn’t know him, of this he was sure. Across from him, the eyes of Severus Snape stared into his, confident, curious.

Who did Snape see now?

Was he still Harry Potter, reckless Gryffindor? 

Snape turned to Charlie. 

“I should not let you off so easily, Mr. Weasley. But I need a Care of Magical Creatures Professor, and I need one now. If you say Potter’s the man for the job, then Potter it must be.”

“I don’t need a job,” said Harry. He didn’t sound convincing. He looked at Charlie imploringly.

“You need a job,” said Charlie, straightening his shoulders. He glanced at Snape. “You need _this_ job.”

“But…” began Harry. 

_But it’s at Hogwarts._

The dragon perched on the cliff had lifted off and was soaring overhead. They all tilted their heads to watch it as it passed. It was grey in color, slow in flight, one of the largest dragons Harry had seen. Harry squinted, inhaled.

“It’s got a cuff on one leg!”

Charlie nodded.

“Used to have two. And chains attached to both.” He looked at Harry significantly. “It showed up here not long after you left—we subdued it long enough to get off some of the hardware. You recognized it?”

The dragon was no longer the sickly white of a life spent chained in the caves below Gringotts. From his vantage point, ten years and a lifetime later, Harry’s heart constricted.

“No.” He shook his head. Smiled as he watched the beast catch a current and soar. “It seems happy.”

“It’s home,” said Charlie, dismissively, as if that explained it all. “Must have come from this colony originally. They always make their way back if they can.”

/

They drank fire whiskey in front of a roaring fire, the three of them, and Charlie sang a baudy drinking song about a ghoul and a garden gnome, and Snape held his liquor well, though in the end, his eyes were glazed over as he said:

“In the end we all come home to Hogwarts.”

“We?” asked Harry, smiling from one side of his mouth and blinking as Snape’s face seemed to morph into Dumbledore’s, intense black eyes incongruous behind half-moon spectacles.

“The lost boys,” Snape sighed. And he picked up his glass and downed the dregs of his fire whiskey, never once taking his eyes off of Harry.

Later, Harry dozed in his chair by the fire. Voices reached his foggy mind. Charlie’s voice. Drunken. Slurred. Suggestive.

“One last time, Sev’rus? For old times’ sake?”

Laughter. Low, deep. Impossible that Snape was laughing. “I invited you back to Hogwarts, Weasley. I offered you a job. You said no. There is no future for us.”

“It’s not my home, Severus.” Charlie’s voice was ever so quiet.

“It is mine.”

Silence. The chink of ice in a glass. 

“Treat him well, Severus.”

A drawn out moment. Silence heavy, warm like a blanket.

“I can hardly see James in him any longer.”

Charlie’s rich laughter. 

“It’s the beard.”

Another long silence.

“No. No it’s not.”

Charlie slipped into bed that night and held him like a lost brother. And Harry…Harry dreamed of home.

/

He closed up Grimmauld Place. He shaved his beard and bought new robes and packed up his old school trunk and sent it through the Floo ahead of him.

He made his peace with Albus first, wiped the snow away from the inscription on his tomb, laid a wreath of pine boughs on the white marble. He rested his forehead on the cold stone, kneeling on the wet ground, closed his eyes tightly, tried to conjure an image of the old Headmaster. Half moon glasses, eyes as blue and bright as the sparkling ocean in a face well worn with age and cares. Old hands, wrinkled, unaccountably powerful. His voice. The words he had spoken in Harry’s dream, in King’s Cross Station, when Harry died but lived. An enigma then, a puzzle now. Man or god? Wizard or king? 

He stood, ran numb fingers once more over cold marble, and turned back toward the castle. 

The Headmaster met him at the door, all bluster and bother. 

“Get inside at once so I can close this door, Potter. It’s freezing in here and you don’t have a warming charm in you that can remove the chill from these stones.” He closed the door behind Harry, gaze swiping down from red cheeks to wet knees. Harry stomped the snow off his boots and smiled, eyes sweeping over the empty hall. He was eleven again, about to be sorted. He was fourteen, watching Fred and George step over Dumbledore’s age line. He was seventeen, and Voldemort was waiting in the Great Hall. 

He was twenty-eight and facing his fears.

“Happy Christmas to you, too, Headmaster.”

/

There were twelve trees in the Great Hall, each of them festooned with holly and mistletoe and fairy lights and tinsel.

The suits of armor wore wreathes around their necks.

The rail of the great staircase was draped with garlands of pine.

There was a tree in his quarters, in the cozy corner beside the fireplace, near the window that looked out over the castle courtyard. Tiny, enchanted snitches fluttered around it in gold motion. 

Sense memory guided him, all these years later. He stood, unbound, on the Astronomy Tower, looked toward Hogsmeade and saw nothing but stars in the clear sky over the frozen loch. The empty hospital wing echoed his quiet footfalls. He opened the Room of Requirement, a cozy living room, fire burning merrily and tea for two set on the low table before the worn sofa. Slippers, two pair, lined up to warm before the fire. Someone else on the sofa, reading, waiting for him. Brave Gryffindor he may be, but not brave enough to face this room. He closed the doors, one after the other, on the haunts of his past and when even the Shrieking Shack was behind him, he paused before the stone gargoyle and frowned.

“Bezoar,” said a low voice behind him. The gargoyle moved aside and the Headmaster stepped past him onto the spiral stairway.

“Come, Potter,” he said. “We have a syllabus to discuss.”

Harry followed. He had much more than a syllabus on his mind.

He sat across the desk from Snape and they talked. Discussed. Argued. Began with the syllabus. Harry didn’t like it, suggested some changes, pushed hard for his points. _Thestrals first year. A unit on wand lore – bowtruckles and unicorns and phoenixes and dragons. Magical pets third year with practicals. Dragons sixth year, with a week’s stay on the preserve in Romania._ Snape’s eyebrow rose as he considered the changes, considered Harry.

Ten years and Snape looked younger, better. His hair was longer, cleaner. His eyes brighter, the permanent scowl, that fixture of his face, not so permanent after all. He was still sharp-witted, still prone to glare, but just as likely to smirk. He was efficient, wasting no words and no actions. He was professional. He was demanding. He could be sarcastic and opinionated. But he listened. He looked at Harry when he spoke. 

He was what Harry had not recognized in him ten years ago. Headmaster, yes. But a man beyond that, apart from that. Long fingers, sharp features, strong shoulders, narrow waist. A hint of stubble on his chin. 

_This is just what I needed_ , thought Harry as he took his leave and went to his office to review the former professor’s notes and rosters. _Hogwarts from the other side._

_Just what Hogwarts needed_ , thought Snape as he considered the changes Harry had requested. _A man who thinks for himself. Who is not afraid of changes (not afraid of me). A breath of fresh air._

And Albus Dumbledore, eyes closed in his portrait behind Snape’s desk, no longer the captain of this vessel but still the heart of Hogwarts, smiled in his painted sleep. _Just what they both need._

And two days later, as Harry ate Christmas dinner in the Great Hall with a handful of faculty and a half dozen students, Snape held out a Christmas cracker to him and they pulled it together and Harry watched white mice scamper away as an Admiral’s hat popped into shape, recalling Christmas feasts long ago and childhood wonder and magical dreams. 

Harry grabbed the hat out of the air and without further ado, reached forward and settled it onto Snape’s head, adjusting it so that it grazed his ears. 

“It suits you, Captain,” he said, then gave him a significant look and tucked into his Christmas feast.

/

Despite the Headmaster’s excellent handling of the ship that was Hogwarts, things did not always run smoothly between them.

There were disagreements, sometimes leading to arguments. Snape did not like the Care of Magical Creatures Professor’s “fan club” and discouraged the “cult of Harry Potter.” He complained about the crups in the castle when the third years began their practicum. He appeared in Harry’s classroom at least once a week and Harry complained to Ron and Hermione one Saturday afternoon and they exchanged a look, _that_ look, and Harry saw it and…

_Oh._

And he began to watch Snape more closely, to spar with him more freely, without reservation. He gained confidence with his job, with his students, with his employer. He and Severus ( _you may as well call me Severus, Potter. The rest of the faculty do, and whenever you call me Headmaster I look around for Albus…_ ) took their arguments to the Three Broomsticks on the weekends, or to the Hog’s Head, discussing curriculum over pints.

One evening, walking home from Hogsmeade, tipsy and warm and wanting to know and throwing caution to the wind, Harry asked about his mother.

_You loved her. Have you ever loved another?_

Severus did not answer at first. _I could never love another woman,_ he said. 

Harry considered his words and kept walking.

In April, he did boggarts with the fifth years.

There was, of course, a chance he’d have to face the thing himself, but he lined up the exercise just as Remus had done all those years ago. He had no idea what the boggart would become for him now that Voldemort was dead and he had his Patronus to keep the Dementors at bay. What more was there to fear from without when the true terror was trapped inside?

And the inevitable happened and he did have to step in. Julius Epstein faltered in the face of the giant three-headed serpent, and Harry moved in front of it and nearly dropped his wand as the serpent saw him _saw into him, into his eyes, into his not-so-brave-after-all-heart,_ morphed into an old man, sitting alone in the middle of a loveseat, with a tarnished tea service for one on the table before him. His aged hand shook as he lifted a fine porcelain cup slowly to his thin lips, staring ahead vacantly. The old man shivered.

“Riddikulus!”

The spell ripped from his lips, the old man’s faded pajamas turned into a frilly pink too-short nightgown. The children erupted in laughter and the boggart disappeared with a crack. Harry turned around, breathing heavily.

He was startled to find himself face to face with the Headmaster.

Who stared at him, eyes narrowed, then broke his gaze and clapped his hands together.

“Excellent work, all of you. And now that Professor Potter has banished the boggart and sent it on a shopping adventure to Madam Malkin’s Intimate Apparel Collection, who can tell me the most likely place to find a boggart hiding?”

Harry backed against a wall, stayed there, quietly watching the Headmaster quiz his students. They performed admirably, and Severus finally nodded at him.

“I will send for two of them next time I find a boggart, Professor Potter,” he said. “I shall expect them to banish it without assistance from you.”

And with a final glance at Harry, half curious, half puzzled, he bowed his head briefly and departed.

 _Perhaps the tea was poisoned,_ one of the Ravenclaws suggested as they left the classroom soon thereafter.

 _I think he’s afraid of growing old,_ whispered another.

 _Not growing old,_ thought Harry as the children, fifteen years old, sixteen, forgot his fears and hurried away. _Growing old…alone._

He remembered, then, the Room of Requirement.

The tea for two, the warm sofa, the blazing fire.

Two pair of slippers, one black, one blue, warming on the hearth. 

The man on the sofa, head bent over a book.

 _Show me what I need_ , he had said. _Show me home._

Home looked a lot like Hogwarts.

_Everything you need is already here._

/

He spends the summer exploring the Forbidden Forest. He had befriended old Jarvis, the groundskeeper who took over when Hagrid followed Madame Maxine to Beauxbatons. Jarvis helps him feed the thestrals and count the herd. It has been a banner year for the creatures, and there are a dozen foals, strong despite their surface fragility and thin, ineffective wings. He leads Harry to a hillside overlooking a muddy pond where he’s found a colony of nifflers, and wonders aloud if the Acramantulas will thin them out. With the Acramantulas, Harry is somewhere between Hagrid and Ron. He is not afraid of them, but is not their friend. He respects them and keeps his distance. He and Jarvis troop together to the lake to tickle the giant squid, then Jarvis returns to his hut to tend the pumpkin vines and treat them to the unicorn manure they have gathered from the forest.

The unicorns, like the thestrals, have had a good summer. Harry has counted three foals, and suspects there may be a fourth, and perhaps even a fifth. He brings three-year old Rosie with him one day, and sits with her a hundred yards into the Forest. He softly sings the hungry niffler song with her while they sit in the shadows and wait. Rosie looks like Hermione but Harry humors Ron and tells him she’s all Weasley. The unicorns come, as they always do on summer mornings, and the golden foal lifts its head and stares as Rosie inhales, her eyes saucer wide and sunshine bright. She is transfixed, as Harry knew she would be, and he remains still as the child holds out her hand and the foal steps forward.

Rosie turns her hand over and extends it, palm up. The foal is so close now that Harry wears its warm breath on his shoulder. Rosie reaches out and sighs as she runs her fingers through the golden mane. A whinny from its mother and the foal backs away. Harry carefully gathers the golden hairs clinging to the small fingers. His goddaughter will have a wand one day, a powerful wand, subtle and sure, suited to her, the hair of a unicorn foal won by its owner as its magical core.

He brings several of the gossamer threads to the Headmaster. Severus spends the summers brewing, conducting his own research and preparing the potions Madam Pomfrey will need in the infirmary throughout the school year. Severus stares for long moments at the golden hairs in his palm. He swallows and looks at Harry.

“What will you will be bringing me next?” he asks. “A flailing fern?” 

It is the highest of compliments without being a compliment at all. Flailing ferns are dangerous, rare, highly prized as a potions ingredient and nearly impossible to harvest. He pushes back his stool and stands, goes over to his desk and opens a drawer. He extracts a long black box, opens it to reveal a deep green velvet lining, and carefully places the hairs within.

“Thank-you, Harry,” he says in that now-quiet voice.

The box stays in his desk for a very long time.

/

Two weeks later, Severus stands in the castle courtyard. The sun is setting, a golden red glow just above the trees to the west, and Harry has not yet returned from his daily foray into the forest. He does not admit to anyone, not even to himself, that he is worried—indeed, that he has even noticed Harry’s absence. He pretends not to see Harry’s figure when it appears at the last and instead walks slowly up the castle stairs, his back to the forest, as if returning from a sunset walk on the cooling grounds. At the top of the stairs, he raises his hand to shield his eyes and turns to survey his realm. He focuses now on the figure moving so very slowly toward him.

Harry is carrying a large plant like a trophy. It is a fern, a flailing fern to be sure, nearly a meter across, fronds still whipping about. Harry’s face is cut and he is limping badly. His robes are shredded near the hem, his boots muddy past the ankle. He climbs the stairs, one at a time, slowly, laboriously. His lip is swollen, his cheek bruised.

“Well, I can cross that one off my bucket list,” he says as he shoves the fern at Severus.

Severus conjures a box and quickly drops the flailing fern into it. A flailing fern is not a mere token. It is not something Harry just happened upon. The gift is a king’s ransom. It is the head of an enemy on a platter, the Holy Grail, a successful Crusade.

“Well?” asks Potter. He limps forward and looks down into the box, then up at Severus. He is grinning tiredly. The grin clashes with his appearance. He looks as if he has just wrestled a troll or gone hand to fist with the Whomping Willow. “Do you like it?”

Does he like it? Of course he likes it. Just as he likes the hairs from the unicorn foal’s mane. Just as he likes looking at Harry, just as he’d like tangling his fingers in his hair.

“Poppy is on holiday,” he says. It is not the answer to the question Harry has asked. “I suppose you had better come with me.”

Harry follows him into the castle, walking very slowly, taking his time on the great stairway. Up the spiral stairway, into Severus’ office, through the doorway, up another flight of stairs and then into the Headmaster’s private quarters.

Harry stops just past the doorway. He has never before been here, yet he recognizes the room. It is the place he requested from the Room of Requirement. The fire, the sofa, the tea on the low table. Slippers by the fire. It only lacks another pair of slippers warming, another cup on the tea service. Warmth and color and flickering light and shadows draw him further into the room.

“Sit.” Severus points to the sofa and disappears down the corridor. 

Harry sits.

“I’m not a healer,” Severus tells him as he nonetheless cleans his face and heals the scratches. Bruise balm on his cheek next, then he helps Harry remove his boots and his trousers, clinically examines the torn and swollen knee, moves it carefully as Harry winces and pales.

Harry sleeps on the sofa that night.

And it is a natural thing, gradual but sure, that Harry becomes a fixture in Severus’ life and home.

He sleeps other nights on the sofa, sometimes after pints at the Hog’s Head or a late night playing a third game of chess or debating a point of curriculum or the most effective ways to discipline a student. One night in December, after the students have left for the holiday, Harry follows Severus into his bedroom, where he has gone to fetch a warmer blanket for his overnight guest. They have had a heavy meal, and a bottle of merlot, and they stand side by side, looking at the warm and comfortable bed, hypnotized by the drowsying heat of the fire the house elves have started in the grate. 

They sleep side by side on their backs, beneath the heavy quilts, not quite touching. Severus sleeps in a long nightshirt, and has loaned Harry an extra. Harry falls asleep to the sound of Severus’ breathing and sleeps soundly. He wakes in the morning when Severus leaves the bed to use the loo. He stares at the ceiling, feeling rested and sated, comfortable and secure. 

Severus crawls back under the covers and now it is Harry’s turn. He is soon back in bed as well, shivering, and gives up all pretenses of platonic companionship as he cuddles into Severus’ side for warmth. 

“You talk in your sleep,” he says in a raspy morning voice as he presses a kiss to Severus’ shoulder.

“I am surprised you could hear me over your snoring,” returns Severus. His arm tightens around Harry and he rubs his stubbly chin on Harry’s cheek. It is not a kiss, but it is just as intimate a gesture. 

“Your feet are cold,” says Severus. 

“Get used to it,” Harry murmurs. He lifts his head and smiles at Severus.

Severus kisses him.

Steals the smile from his face, the groggy warmth from his eyes. Harry’s eyes close as he loses himself in the kiss. Severus’ lips release his. He feels their dry press against one eyelid, then the other. Keeps his eyes closed until he hears the quiet voice in his ear, seductive, commanding.

“Harry, look at me.”

He opens his eyes slowly. 

They regard each other a long moment. Harry smiles. He stretches upward to meet Severus’ lips. They kiss again. And again. 

And again.

Later, Harry’s eyes drift shut and he falls back asleep, his head tucked comfortably in the crook of Severus’ neck. Severus is still awake, his hand rubbing slow circles on Harry’s back.

Tomorrow is Christmas.

And Harry is finally home.

_Fin_


End file.
